US : Renesas Technology and Symbian have announced an agreement to add full-scale support for Symbian OS, the open OS for smartphones, to Renesas' advanced silicon platform for 3G mobile phones.

Porting the popular Symbian OS to the Renesas mobile platform will enable handset manufacturers to create smaller and differentiated handsets to market while significantly reducing development time and costs of phones.

Renesas together with NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest mobile telecom company, is currently developing a single-chip LSI that combines a dual-mode (GSM/GPRS and W-CDMA) 3G baseband processor and an application processor for improved multimedia performance, required in next-generation 3G handsets. The platform will also incorporate a modem function such as an RF front-end IC and RF power amplifier, and software such as a protocol stack, middleware, drivers and Symbian OS.

"By making the most of Renesas and Symbian's expertise in smartphone technology, Renesas will further accelerate the proliferation of its highly integrated, market-ready mobile platform into the 3G market," said Ikuya Kawasaki, deputy general manager of system solution business unit 2 at Renesas.

The 3G mobile platform will be available in the second quarter of 2006, as will production quantities of Renesas' dual-mode single chip LSI.

Motorola has today announced the creation of a dedicated 3G mobile phone design centre in Basingstoke. The company’s mobile devices business will be deploying existing employees to the centre as well as creating new engineering and product development jobs.